...Quesnel School District 28 and all of B.C.’s school districts have been informed that they will not have to pay their share of $25 million worth of provincial charges this year, and instead can redirect that money into front line services for students.

Oakes has expressed she would like to meet with the school district’s chair quickly to discuss this funding and options to keep rural schools open, ensuring the region’s smaller communities continue to be well-served and minimizing the time students need to travel to-and-from school on buses.

“I hope this announcement will encourage trustees not to dismiss the recommendations from rural communities and try to keep their schools open, ensuring these important financial resources continue to benefit the entire district. It’s important we work in collaboration to ensure our region’s students continue to receive the high-quality instruction that has made B.C. a world-leader in educational outcomes,” Oakes added...

Clearly, the focus-grouping being done by Dmitri's drone brigade is showing them that they are in big, big trouble on the public education front.

Meanwhile...

They are still giving $350 million, plus, of public money to private schools to keep the riff-raff out.

And, weirdly, they are doing their best to smear Bob Mackin as 'anti-youth':

Why?

Well, there's the real reason (i.e. because the young folks Mr. Mackin calls out on the Twittmachine are, in the main, BC Liberal Party operatives-in-training).

And then there's the likely true (but not necessarily truthful) Segrettist reason, which will be so that one of them can start a blog and/or InstaChatSnapNappy site where they bemoan how it is all the press' fault for sowing cynicism amongst the younger. Then, bingo-bango, they hook a 'real' proMedia clubmember to wurlitzer it up and they're legend.

Sound far fetched?

Well...

There was that wee matter of how just such a conflation was pumped full of helium to full, exploding deflector spin effect back in 2013.

Bird’s resume includes stints under ex-Premier Gordon Campbell at Canada’s high commission in London, as CEO of the Columbia Power Corporation and CEO of the Canada Line, the SNC-Lavalin built-and-operated airport-to-downtown SkyTrain...

Thursday, May 26, 2016

And/or the heavy breathing of the Deputy Premier on affordability and housing, and all that.

Martin MacMahon of CKWX has the story:Claiming there are some people who will never be happy on housing, the minister responsible is defending the province’s record on that file.

Stating there’s a lot of provincial work that goes unseen, such as 20,000 seniors receiving cheques to subsidize housing, Minister Rich Coleman says the work that is done by the province isn’t always recognized...

{snip}

...“I guess some people just have to get up and whine every day, I don’t know,” says Coleman...

I actually think I kinda/sorta get why Mr. Coleman might be legitimately upset by folks slagging his efforts on this file.

Why?

Because while Mr. Coleman's efforts here are only half-measures, at best, they do at least something real standing behind the photo-ops and the prop-a-gammon.

But, when you are part of a government that has been going full-bore photo-op since (at least) 2011...

Well.

How do you expect people to react to half-measures?

________And, for those of us who have been paying attention...We also recall where affordable public housing has been lost in Lotusland...And for those who pay attention to minutae (for the irony)...We also recall how a certain fine fellow who once championed a notion that became the fast-ferrified Ice Bomb bridge around our collective necks used to tell anyone that would listen that Mr. Coleman was going to turn the social housing landscape into Valhalla...

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Here is the lede of the actual abstract (no MSM filter required) from one of the latest articles published in said journal that was written by scientists at Environment and Climate Change Canada, the University of Calgary and Yale University:Worldwide heavy oil and bitumen deposits amount to 9 trillion barrels of oil distributed in over 280 basins around the world1, with Canada home to oil sands deposits of 1.7 trillion barrels2. The global development of this resource and the increase in oil production from oil sands has caused environmental concerns over the presence of toxic compounds in nearby ecosystems3, 4 and acid deposition5, 6. The contribution of oil sands exploration to secondary organic aerosol formation, an important component of atmospheric particulate matter that affects air quality and climate7, remains poorly understood. Here we use data from airborne measurements over the Canadian oil sands, laboratory experiments and a box-model study to provide a quantitative assessment of the magnitude of secondary organic aerosol production from oil sands emissions. We find that the evaporation and atmospheric oxidation of low-volatility organic vapours from the mined oil sands material is directly responsible for the majority of the observed secondary organic aerosol mass. The resultant production rates of 45–84 tonnes per day make the oil sands one of the largest sources of anthropogenic secondary organic aerosols in North America...

'Nuff said?

________And, as an aside, it is interesting to note that the paper was first submitted (i.e. 'received' by the journal on November 9, 2015 which is just a couple of weeks after....Well...You know...

The B.C. Liberal goverment recently announced that some natural-gas projects won't have to undergo provincial environmental assessments.This is despite the government losing a court decision to First Nations, who objected to the province's refusal to subject the Northern Gateway pipeline to an Environmental Assessment Office review.The Spectra South Peace pipeline, Spectra's Dawson gas plant, Spectra's Fort Nelson North plant, Nova Gas Transmission's Groundbirch pipeline, and Nova Gas Transmission's Horn River mainline extension were exempted under an order-in-council last week...

Entirely coincidentally (of course!), the fine folks from Spectra, whose home office is in Texas (Oil and Gas Team Forever!!), have someone most interesting working for them on the ground here in Clarkland, as also noted by Mr. Smith:

Just in case you don't remember a specific, most fascinating aspect of Ms. Haakstad's tenure as Ms. Clark's deputy chief, how about we dig up a few wise words taken from one of the Dean's last good, pulled punches-free columns, like, ever:

The date was Jan. 10, 2012 and Premier Christy Clark’s inner circle was hard at work on a strategy to capture the ethnic vote.

“Anecdotal
reports suggest that some ethnic communities, particularly Chinese,
feel that they are ignored by government between elections,” wrote the
premier’s hand-picked deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad in a
confidential memo to key staffers in the government...

{snippety doo-dah}

As for the means by
which this might be accomplished, the premier’s office urged the pursuit
of “quick wins,” for instance: “Identify and correct ‘historical
wrongs,’ such as the Komagata Maru apology in the house.”

For
some, the aforementioned apology, like the one the Liberals are planning
to deliver for the Chinese head tax, represent long-overdue redress for
genuinely wrong actions in the provincial past.

But for Haakstad
and her little band of hacks — the distribution list included Clark
staffers Pamela Martin, Barinder Bhullar and Lorne Mayencourt — the
apologies were merely a vehicle for scoring a quick win with ethnic
voters...

{snippety doodle-dandy}

.... (A) thorough
reading underscored a more insidious element. The premier’s office
proposed to combine the resources of the public service and the
resources provided to MLAs to represent their constituents — both
taxpayer funded — and bend them to the partisan purposes of the Liberal
party...

So.

There you have it...

Four years and some months later, pretty much everybody wins.

Except, of course, for the designated fall guy.

But, in the end, we're pretty sure he, too, will be taken care of.

Right?

_______And, yes, that link, above, back to the glory days of GordCo Inc's 'Oil and Gas Team' is a post from back in the dinosaur days of June 2004, the first month of this little F-Troop blog's existence...Boy, am I ever an old guy...In more ways than one....Weirdly, though, the BCL's crony-tricksterims are amazingly similar, then and now...

The piece was written by Justine Hunter and Laura Stone, and the money shot from Deputy Darth (a.k.a. Rich Coleman) is the following:

...(Mr.) Coleman told reporters he doesn’t think voters will be swayed by the matter: The substance of the allegations were already known before the 2013 election campaign and the BC Liberals still won. “We went in 26 points behind and came out with a win, so it’s not going to be the top-of-mind issue"...

Now, to be fair, Ms. Hunter and Ms. Stone (whose job here, I believe, was to collect a little word salad from the Premier in Ottawa) did tell us a wee bit about what the Dyble whitewashing....errrr...investigation found prior to the last election:

...An investigation on the eve of the 2013 election by the Premier’s deputy minister, John Dyble, found (former government staffer) Mr. (Brian) Bonney played a key role in the creation of an elaborate and wide-reaching “multicultural outreach strategy” on behalf of Ms. Clark’s government.

Mr. Dyble found several government officials breached the public-service code of conduct and that government resources were misused for political purposes, leading Ms. Clark to dump two officials, including her deputy chief of staff, Kim Haakstad, and Mr. Bonney.

As well, her party repaid $70,000 to government for the time Mr. Bonney spent conducting BC Liberal business while he was on the public payroll...

After the LAST provincial election (see Deputy Darth's comments above).

I mean, seriously, this really is like RailGate all over again what with the never ending 'Can't talk about it because it's before the courts!' dodges and the 'temporary' publication ban on said court proceedings having been thrown into the mix.

And then there is the fact that it now looks like the latest Quick Wins-associated charge will probably not be dealt with until after the NEXT provincial election.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

The Dean of the Lotuslandian Legislative Press Gallery, Mr. Vaughn Palmer, published a column in the pixellated version of the VSun last night that attempted to explain why he and his fellow club members are justified in not doing any digging to find out where, exactly, the stench of pay-to-play money-grubbing and/or voter manipulation clinging to the rotting carcass of Clarklandian ethics is actually coming from.

The following is an excerpt from said column to that is being presented to you, dear reader/cult member in an attempt to prove that point:...“How did the premier get to become the premier in what was a controversial process involving Mr. Kevin Falcon, who was apparently the front-runner until they counted the vote, which was part of the submission I think Mr. Butcher was reviewing as well,” (opposition leader John) Horgan alleged.

I emphasize the “alleged.” Although a senior member of Horgan’s staff briefed me some time ago on the NDP’s reading of the Dix submission as it related to the Liberal leadership, I saw only unproven allegations that relied heavily on the claims of a single informant. Other journalists also received advance confidential briefings about the supposed implications for the Liberal leadership.

But as anyone could see from reaching the charge sheet this week, Bonney was accused of breach of trust in connection with a train of events that unfolded starting Oct. 16, 2011, six months after the conclusion of the leadership race.

While the special prosecutor concluded there was enough evidence to lay a serious criminal charge in connection with the quick wins scandal, there’s no indication from what has been presented in court that he made anything of the allegations involving the Liberal leadership...

So.

Mr. Palmer doesn't believe, based on what he has been shown, that there is anything to the matter of how Ms. Clark came to be BCL Party leader.

Which is fair enough, I suppose, as far as it goes, particularly given that it would appear that Mr. Palmer is loathe to do any further digging on his own.

But seriously...

Why wave away the potential seriousness that the criminal charge to Mr. Bonney could have on Clarklandian fortunes (as Darth Vader did elsewhere today) because he, Mr. Palmer, cannot see how this can possibly be connected to the above-mentioned leadership race?

Why, also, is Mr. Palmer ignoring the matter of that $150,000 cheque that was given out by the premier just prior to a local election in a far-flung (and windy!) corner of the province that, by the premier's own admission, occurred because she, herself, responded to a direct request from a candidate in said far-flung local election?

I mean, it's almost as if there is a pact among Lotuslandian Legislative proMedia club members to immediately stop digging whenever they get a whiff of the stench clinging to the premier and/or seeping out from under her office door.

Gosh.

Maybe it paralyzes them or something.

______Cults 'n members 'n all that? (for actually caring about the stench)...Darn tootin'.

Given the history of this particular Made-In-Canada thing, particularly the 'secret amnesty' aspect of it, it's hard avoid thinking that the current artful dodging, based on the following by Harvey Cashore and Kimberley Ivany of the CBC, is being done on purpose:

The Canada Revenue Agency routinely failed to meet deadlines under the Access to Information Act after receiving requests for documents about the KPMG offshore tax scandal and private lobbying meetings with the accounting industry, according to a summary provided by the agency itself.

CBC News began making requests to the federal agency more than a year ago for information about compliance officials and their meetings with KPMG executives, Department of Justice officials, and industry lobbyists — yet deadlines to produce those records have repeatedly not been met...

And how, exactly, you might be asking yourself can the CRA get away with this egregiousity?

Well.

It turns out that there are no consequences whatsoever:

...As for when the bulk of the documents might be produced, (the CBC's Dean) Beeby says there is no way of knowing when CRA might finally comply. Beeby says the act contains no penalties, so there is no incentive to provide documents in a timely fashion...

But when Josephine Q. Citizen gets a letter from the CRA demanding information and documentation in a timely manner...

"...On Tuesday afternoon, Election Act charges against (former Christy Clark Gov't staffer Brian) Bonney and former Liberal party official Mark Robertson over payments to a 2012 byelection worker were dropped. The charges were from the same investigation. Their numbered company, which does business as Mainland Communications, pleaded guilty and was fined $5,000.

Bonney's offence is alleged to have happened between Oct. 16, 2011, and Dec. 31, 2012 in Vancouver. Details are covered under a temporary publication ban..."

****

Number 2: 'Seventy Thousand Is Less Than A Tenth Of It' (a.k.a. How to spend seven figures of public money without ever 'implementing' the plan):

"...The (QuickWins) documents also showed almost $1 million was siphoned from the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation to increase the nearly $2.5 million budget for the multiculturalism portfolio a year before the provincial election campaign..."

****

Number 3: Disappearing The Documents With Deniability (a.k.a. Hiding in plain Google-free sight):

"...Bonney's charge came eight days after the B.C. government's Open Information website was redesigned and the Quick Wins documents removed from the home page. Since June 11, 2013, the three links to the Quick Wins document dump were displayed under the heading Special Information Release. The documents are not available in the new search engine database.

After a Tyee query, Cindy Kukucska, an Information Access Operations manager, sent a link to the March 14, 2013 announcement about the Dyble report where the three missing links had been added to the bottom of the archived news release. "Their current location is appropriate," Kukucska said..."

Groundbreaking provincial legislation being introduced Wednesday will give Toronto and other Ontario municipalities long-awaited tools to force builders to include affordable housing as part of new residential developments, the Star has learned.

But municipalities will also be required to contribute to the cause by offering development charge rebates, density bonuses and property tax waivers, according to sources familiar with the legislation.

If passed and used by Ontario municipalities, it would be a first in Canada...

Heckfire!

Not only would Clarklandia's biggest big money devoper donors very likely not get behind such an initiative, I would be willing to bet that that they would (will?) actively work (not by asking Darth Vader to do so 'directly', of course) to stop it.

So.

Given all the money those developer donors are donating, some of which passes through the BC Liberal money laundering machinery before it lands, grease-laden, the Premier's palm, how can we possibly stop them from using their big money to kill such an initiative if it turns out this is something that we, the people actcually, want?

I think we all know the answer to that.

(and I think we all know why such an initiative is being initiated in Ontario now rather than, say, this time last year).

...As all charges arising out of this matter are currently before the court, the CJB and the special prosecutor will not be making further comment on the details of the files. The CJB said that it is important that the integrity of the court process be respected and the matters be allowed to unfold in the ordinary course.

If, at the end of all related court proceedings, the special prosecutor determines it to be in the public interest that further information about this matter should be provided to the public, including information about other charges that may have been considered during the course of the RCMP investigation and not approved, the special prosecutor will issue a Clear Statement in consultation with the CJB...

Gosh, who'd-a-thunk-it...

It's all before the courts for the duration.

And not only does this provide cover on the specifics of the single breach-of-trust unveiled today, it ensures that there will be no discussion of anything else that the Horseman brought to the special prosecutor until 'after' the fact (if ever).

_______Interestingly,as IntegrityBC has noted this little exchange disappeared from the gov't happytalk site soon after it was posted...Gosh, can they delete stuff like this if it is 'official' government business?What's a 'PAB-Bot' you ask?...Well it's our affectionate name for lurkers and media/blog monitors from the old GordCo days when 'PAB' stood for 'Public Affairs Bureau'...Now it's 'Communication Geniuses Inc.', or some such thing...'OIC' = 'Order-In-Council' which is, essentially, a political appointment wherein the appointee serves at the pleasure of the regime leader...

This morning I learned that it really is the end of the world as we know it.

And, no, I'm not talking about REM.

****

I stopped in at the Sobey's New Empire Foodworld Emporium, or Safeway, or whatever the heck they will ultimately call it, on my ride in to work because I needed lunch-type supplies and I didn't have time to make the bend all the way down to South Campus to that place that Jimmy built (and one of our readers nominally helps run).

Anyway...

After I had explained, for the fourth time, that I didn't need a plastic bag and was getting ready to plug my card into the machine, the four dead guys came on the sound system.

And it wasn't even the tune you hear in every hockey arena everywhere now days.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Back in 2013, Mr. Ken Rea, the Chief Councillor of the Old Massett Village Council on Haida Gwaii, was re-elected easily:Residents of Old Massett went to the polls on Dec. 2, overwhelmingly returning incumbent Chief Councillor Ken Rea to the community's top spot.

Rea was running against three other candidates for the position and received 184 of the 363 votes, giving him just over 50 per cent of the popular vote. The next closest challenger was Roger Smith, who finished with 88 votes....

Then, in 2015, Mr. Rea was re-elected again, but things were much closer this time around when he beat rival Mr. Kimball Davidson by just 42 votes.

Which might have reasonable folks wondering if there might have been some doubt about the outcome of the recent 2015 election in the last week campaign (i.e. in late November of 2015.

Which election was preceded, by just one week, by the out-of-the-blue arrival of a private jet containing Premier Christy Clark bearing a $150,000 cheque for Mr. Rea and the Old Massett Village Council to explore the expansion of the village school?

Hmmmm....

Hang on a second while we go have a look at the photo-op laden records of Ms. Clark's government...

Because if there really is no such record, and if Ms. Clark really did decide to do this on her own because she was asked to do so 'directly' by one of the people running in said closely contested local election...

Well...

Would it not be reasonable for reasonable British Columbians to wonder if, by not waiting until AFTER the closely contested local election was over to make a big splash and handout $150,000 to one of the people running, that, at the very least, Ms. Clark created the perception that she was trying to influence said election?

And with public money no less.

______And, lest you think I am being overzealous in my request to see the record of what (if anything) went down in the Ministry of Education, do not forget that, when he was contacted by Mr. Hume about all of this last December, Mr. Bruce Clark said that he told Mr. Rea who to contact in the Ministry of Education, which is something that Mr. Rea confirmed...Additionally, Ms. Clark's spokesperson, Mr. Ben Chin told CKNW's Matt Lee that the government had been working on the issue for more than a year.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

________ *At very particular times and places across oceans in a pre-interwebzian world...During a very short-lived Lotuslandian epoch you could glean specific shade of the mattering by the colour of the first album in an acquaintenance's record collectification.

The B.C. Supreme Court will hear arguments related to a lawsuit alleging illegal “late-payment charges” for tolls on the Port Mann Bridge at a class action application hearing before the end of 2016.

Jasper Lui had claimed that he missed paying $26.25 in toll charges in 2014, and said Transportation Investment Corporation — which oversees the bridge — billed him another $20 on top of the overdue payment.

Lawyer Nathaniel Hartney, who represents Lui, said on Thursday that the additional processing fee is illegal in Canada, since the law caps maximum interest per year at 60%...

But as for the melting away?

Likely not gonna happen, at least from a public payment point of view, given that Dermod Travis and Integrity BC have determined that the fixed price thing was a complete fiction from the get-go.

...Coulter will release a new book praising the candidate, "In Trump We Trust: The New American Revolution," this summer, her publisher Sentinel announced...

{snip}

...Sentinel describes "In Trump We Trust" as a "short but powerful book" that "explains why conservatives, moderates, and even disgruntled Democrats should set aside their doubts and embrace Trump."

Then again, I suppose there is no actual evidence that very finest of the fine folks like Mr. Ryan and Ms. Coulter actually dislike voluntarily engaging their pharyngeal muscles to send their own regurgitate southward when it is required for their self-preservation (and/or monetary reward).

Friday, May 13, 2016

This week our fine premier responded to questions in the legislature from the leader of the Opposition about $150,000 of provincial money that was given to do a feasibility study to expand a school on Haida Gwaii that does not fall under provincial jurisdiction thusly:

J. Horgan: When you met with chiefs in September (2015), did they identify this school as a priority, and is that why you ended up in Haida Gwaii on November 26 (2015)?

Hon. C. Clark: I met with a lot of chiefs that day, and a lot of chiefs met with a lot of different ministers. I can’t give the member a full accounting of what all of them and all of their elected representatives talked to ministers and deputies about.

"...Spokesperson Ben Chin says the province has been discussing expanding the local school in Old Massett for more than a year, and that Premier Christy Clark was not aware of any wind farm proposal tied to her brother Bruce Clark..."

Gosh.

Do you see what I see (re: dates 'n stuff)?

And as for that wind farm proposal thingy backed by the premier's brother that the premier knew absolutely nothing about according to the good Mr. Chin?

Well...

It turns out that the Premier did receive a direct conversational/paperless request for the money from someone who does.

Know about the wind farm proposal from the premier's brother I mean.OK?

_______Blogger Merv Adey reported first on the re-emergence of this story....Here.Laila follows up....Here.I have my say...Here.As for the local proMedia?....Absolute crickets so far....

J. Horgan: The question was….
After reading the regulation change that said that political staff may
hold jobs outside…. Maybe I'll be more specific. Does anyone in the
Premier's staff receive stipends from the B.C. Liberal Party?

Hon. C. Clark: I take it he's talking about me.

I'm not aware of that happening in my office with any staff members.

J. Horgan: If I can be clear,
then, the Premier does not believe that any of the staff working in
her office receive stipends from the B.C. Liberal Party. Is she aware
of any of the staff in her office holding any other positions, running a
business or a consultancy?

All of which got me to thinking about a 'conversation' that Mr. Clark had with a former member of the Gordon Campbell government that
Ms. Clark herself ran away from as fast as she could back in the days of yore.

Neither of which had anything to do with anything untoward whatsoever.

Basi: "Um, that uh, we have t' make changes and y'know, uh, um, we can draft it anyway we want now, right: so..."

Clark: "Whose, wh', whose hands is it in?"

Basi: "It's, it's in our hands right now."

Clark: "Okay."

Basi: "Uh, and then it'll go back to transportation. And then they'll look at it and then they'll uh, um, issue the official RFP."

Clark: "Okay. What are the time lines like?"

Basi: "Uh, two weeks."

Basi: "So,
I can sit on this thing for two weeks. So if you come back next week
then you can take it and look at it, show it to them. They can, they
can, y'know, change some of the words around, that's obviously, some
buzz words they wanna see in there, right?"

Clark: "Yeah."

Basi: "And
these, these companies know how to, how to, y'know, get the fluff out
of this shit and how to tailor it to themselves, right?"

Clark: "Of course."

...{snippety doo-dah}...

Clark: "Wonder, wonder if it would be better if you got it couriered from here or not?"

Basi: "I don't care. Whatever you want. I don't care."

Clark: "Okay, well maybe I'll get you to courier it to Europe for me, or something."

Basi: "You want me to courier it to Europe?"

Clark: "Sure, you could do that."

...{snippety doodle-dandy}...

Clark: "Or uh, or, or can it be faxed or something or?"

Basi: "Oh it can be faxed, yeah. Do you wanna give me a fax, secure fax number?"

Clark: "Yeah, I'll get you a secure fax number and we can do it that way."

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Back in December of last year we commented on Mark Hume's piece in the Globe
which noted that premier Christy Clark made an unannounced trip to the
small community Old Masset on Haida Gwaii to dole out a whack of our
money for a project for a school under federal (i.e. not provincial) jurisdiction that was supported by a band leader named Ken Rea who just
happened to be in the midst of a campaign for his re-election at the
time.

...Mr. Clark said he had nothing to do with the grant (to the school) and denied doing anything to get Ms. Clark to visit Old Massett.

“I have trouble getting her to come for family dinners,” he said.

Mr. Clark said he did help Mr. Rea make connections with government education officials.

“I simply told [Mr. Rea], ‘If you have issues, here’s who you talk to,’” he said.

Now.

As you can imagine, at the time we wondered who, exactly Mr. Clark told Mr. Rea to talk to.

Which brings us, courtesy Hansard and the eagle eye of Merv Adey, to yesterday's question period in the legislature when the leader of the opposition John Horgan questioned Ms. Clark about who, exactly made the ask.

The following is Ms. Clark's money quote:

..."Chief Ken Rea made the request directly to me in a meeting that we had."...

Looks like Ms. Clark has another event she can haul the entourage and, especially, the videographers to:Hospital
laundry services will be ending throughout the Interior Health region,
leading to the loss of 93 full-time jobs over the next year.

A private, Kelowna-based facility will pick up much of the work, IH said in a press release Tuesday afternoon.

Millions of dollars are expected to be saved.

The
Hospital Employees' Union called the decision deeply disappointing. The
union maintains more than 100 jobs will actually be lost.

The
20-year agreement will see hospital laundry services contracted out to
Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service Inc., a B.C.-based laundry service
company that has provided laundry services to health-care providers at
the Lower Mainland...
Twenty years?
Twenty freaking years?
Right out of the gate!?
Hmmmmm....
I think it's time to go look something up.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

About a year ago, when we learned that the average British Columbia family was going to be forced to spend even more for user fees to visit a provincial park, Mark Hume wrote a very important piece in the Globe.

...In 2001, there were 27 full-time park rangers in the province. Today there are 11, patrolling more than 13 million hectares between them.

Ministry of Environment documents released by the NDP last week show that there isn’t enough money to replace the aging infrastructure in parks or to hire adequate staff.

The documents state that with costs rising and the budget static for years, BC Parks has been “forced … to shorten operating seasons, eliminate park ranger positions, reduce preventive maintenance and implement other program cuts.”...

...Which was a recommendation of the Select Standing Committee On Finance And Government Services, an all party committee of the BC Legislature earlier this year, I doubt much has changed in Ranger land given that the Ministry of Environment (where Parks is housed) budget was flatlined in the latest budget:

But, so what if I'm wrong.

Because even if there was suddenly a 50% increase in full time Park Rangers there would only be 17 of them, which would still be way below pre-GordCo levels.

And it would also be below the number of very fine PAB-Botian folks, right here and right now, whose very specific job is to monitor the media, and that includes blogs, so that they can put little green (for Clarklandian favourable) or red (for Clarklandian unfavourable) squares beside the 'monitored' bits.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Regarding both Ms. Clark and, perhaps more importantly, her government's Conflict Commissioner:"...I remember you when you were smart, Paul. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since you don't think that the fact of your son's long and close friendship with Clark and that he is a politically appointed deputy minister in her government places you in a conflict of interest! Hell, Paul, you're probably right. I mean, who would ever dream that a lawyer making $269,000 a year from a legislature made up largely of Liberals would consider it in his interest to keep those Liberals kindly disposed towards him?..."

Gosh.

And, if I remember correctly, the good Mr. Mair himself is also lawyer.

But not a farmer.

Unless, of course, he also hates Email but doesn't mind the feel of a Blackberry.

..."What (Mr. Edwards is) struggling with and what every businessman is struggling with is the sheer incompetence that's been layered over us at the municipal and federal and provincial levels by inexperienced governments," said Brett Wilson, a Calgary investment banker and close friend of Edwards...

Though Wilson told CBC he doesn't believe taxes are the reason Edwards left Canada...

Calgary investment bankers.

Now there's a source pool I sure would like to hear more from re: 'sheer incompentence' and the 'layering' and all that.

And while he's at it, perhaps Mr. Wilson, or the CTF, or the Fraser Institute, or the Calgary Herald would like to tell us what they think about kd lang and all that.

I have to give Mr. Mason of the The Globe and (nolongerEmpire) Mail some credit.

Because he has, in my opinion at least, been the most active member of the local proMedia in telling British Columbians that there really is a big pile of super-secret money being funneled into the BC Liberal's Party gullet, some of which makes its way to the palm of our fine premier after it has been pooped out the other end.

And heckfire.

In yesterday's column Mr. Mason kinda/sorta almost tiptoed over the 'pay-to-play' line when he started talking about hunting guides, their five figure donations and grizzly bear trophies and such.

Which is all fine and good.

But I also found it interesting, given the events of the last week, that Mason did not mention the millions from mining co's and execs that are extremely well-correlated with the complete lack of oversight of said mining co's and execs that is now entrenched in British Columbia thanks to BC Liberal government policy and legislation.

Or all that money from bridge builders.

Or tunnel borers.

Or train makers.

Or, dare I say it, lawyers? (more on that to come because I'm still really angry about something)

Anyway, after his wee bit of tip-toeing was all done, a little further down the column Mr. Mason signaled that the time has come to really start pulling the punches because, well, the trains are running on time or some such conventionally whimsical wisdomish-type thing:

"...The NDP is likely to make the notion of fixing a corrupt electoral system a pillar of its election campaign. The Liberals are certain to make the next election exclusively about jobs, the economy and fiscal management – and their record on this front is unquestionably impressive..."

Hmmmmm....

Jobs, the economy and fiscal management and 'unquestionably impressive'?

Really Mr. Mason?

Let's see....

Is there somewhere we can go for an unbiased, in-depth look at such things that do not rely on deceptive accounting and/or the spinning of very short-term trend numbers that are often bucked-up by deep dives that occurred during the previous term and/or terms?

I know!

How about we turn to the 'Progress Board', that flaming pinko outfit that was put together by Gordon Campbell that did the in-depth/un-biased analysis to show that the 1990's were actually a little better than the 2000's by most measures.

I mean, maybe that outfit can tell us how 'Pay-To-Play-In-Extremis' has helped float all boats (or not) over the last five years?